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Creation of a Village Information System of Moga district in Punjab using

Geoinformatics

Conference Paper · January 2009

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 National Conference on Recent Developments in Computing and its Applications, NCRDCA’09
August 12-13, 2009

Creation of a Village Information System of

Moga district in Punjab using Geoinformatics
Harpinder Singh*, Kewal Krishan+, P.K. Litoria*
* Punjab Remote Sensing Centre, Ludhiana,+ Lovely Institute of Technology, Phagwara. harpinder13@rediffmail.com

ABSTRACT
Majority of the rural population in India is living in the pre-independence conditions and the economic and technological
advances have widened the rural-urban divide. Developments in Information and Communication technology have given rise
to Geoinformatics which comprise of frontier technologies like Remote Sensing, Geographic information systems (GIS),
photogrammetry and Global positioning system (GPS). Geoinformatics has the potential to enrich rural lives and bring
revolutionary changes. The objective is to bring information collected from diverse sources onto a common platform and
subsequently generate meaningful information by integrating non-spatial data with the thematic maps, using geography as
the common feature so that it can be used for making effective decisions for various planning problems. In this study spatial
data regarding the Land use of Moga district has been extracted from IRS LISS III Satellite data using supervised classifier
Support vector machine (SVM), other linear spatial data has been visually interpreted. Non-spatial tabular data collected
from various government departments has been linked with the village boundary information. The collective spatial and non-
spatial information can be very useful for natural resource management, disaster management, infrastructure development,
health management and various government projects as information when presented in a map format allow a better
perception, visualization of spatial patterns and their relationship with the neighboring areas.

KEYWORDS
Geoinformatics, GIS, Remote Sensing, SVM, Village Information System

INTRODUCTION Planners. In order to resolve the conflicting interests and

Since Independence, India has been witnessing appreciate the inter-dependencies and implement
tremendous growth but one sector that remained holistic development of the area, there is a need to adopt
alienated is the village which according to Gandhiji is an integrated approach to the development/strategy. The
the backbone of the nation. Majority of the rural first step in implementing such a plan is the generation
population is living in the pre-independence conditions of data/information of all the sectors (Land Use, Socio-
and the economic and technological advances have Economic, Demography, Electoral, Infrastructure etc.)
widened the rural-urban divide. Various private and on a common platform so that it is accessible to all the
government organizations are developing technologies user agencies for analysis and scenario generation [1].
for the betterment of the villages, but Geoinformatics is Supervised classification technique using support vector
one technology that has the potential to enrich rural machines (SVMs) classifier has been attempted for
lives and bring revolutionary changes. Decision makers extraction of land use from the digital satellite data.
and planners are handicapped today due to the lack of SVM’s are based on statistical learning theory and
authentic, complete and up to date information. Whether recently been applied to the problem of remote sensing
it is delivering access to safe drinking water, accessing classification[2],[3]. Classification results derived from
the flood damage, setup of a dispensary, waste disposal the SVM approach are better than the results of other
unit, schools and other quality of life concerns of the classifiers like discriminant analysis, decision tree, and
residents, the knowledge and understanding of location multilayer perceptron neural network [2],[4].
or geography plays an important role in making the GIS awareness and requirements have increased
right decisions by the respective government manifold, especially in the Government sector. NIC
department. Tamil Nadu has designed, developed and hosted Tamil
Development planning at district and village level Nadu maps website at http://tnmaps.tn.nic.in. This was
depends on understanding the inter-dependencies and initiated to bring GIS awareness among various
relationships amongst a set of sectoral strategies to get departments. The website envisages dissemination of
integrated into a systematic database involving an land information of various administrative units of
information-intensive task of collection, storage and Tamil Nadu in spatial and non-spatial format [5].
retrieval of spatial and non-spatial data related to local Space Application Centre (SAC), Ahmedabad (ISRO)
resources and its appropriate processing to generate has done a large number of projects related to the
desired sets of information for the Decision-makers and Natural Resource Development. [6] Summarizes the
Department of Computer Science, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi
 Proceedings of NCRDCA’09

major works carried out at SAC and on significance of

Geo-informatics tool in planning, management and
decision making processes at various administrative
levels.
According to [7], Infrastructure development projects
have the largest share of investment in a developing
country like India. Rapid developments in geospatial
technologies are making a significant dent in the
formulations and creation of physical infrastructure
development projects, particularly in transportation and
housing sectors.
Labhpur in West Bengal state is one of the block which
is severely affected by floods very frequently. A micro Fig. 1. Study Area
level study using satellite remote sensing, GIS, and
hydrological data was conducted. The causes of floods health, election and police departments and the village
were studied and various methods were suggested to directory containing more than two hundred parameters
reduce the flood damage. A flood risk zone map was about a village from the planning department.
prepared and proximity to different rescue centres, This system will be a Decision support system as it will
health centres and helipads for each village was assist the decision-makers to generate various eco-
computed. A spatial information system was developed socio-economic views/scenarios for identifying
to help in mitigating the damage and for rescue and candidate villages for various development schemes.
relief operations during the disaster event [8]. Village information system will help to improve the
Environmental degradation, socio-economic decline, governance by decentralizing planning at micro level.
and extreme weather patterns are contributing to The final output in the form of customized applications
changing pattern of morbidity and mortality and posing will be built using open source/freeware tools to reduce
serious challenge to public health. The problems of cost. Various studies using geoinformatics referenced
health are increasing in both spatial and temporal above provide information specifically for a particular
dimension to many newer places, especially in the rural domain but in this study, data from various government
areas due to increased risk of disease transmission departments has been integrated on a single platform for
fuelled by developmental activities, demographic effective decision making.
changes and introduction of newer products. Modern
tools like remote sensing and Geographical Information STUDY AREA
Systems (GIS) have now come in handy to address the The Study area is Moga district in Punjab. Moga came
issues on the disease surveillance, control, monitoring into existence in the year 1996. It lies between latitudes
and evaluation [9]. of 300 29’ 06’’ & 310 06’ 12’’ N and longitudes of 740
Functions of e-Governance include planning, 54’ 12’’ & 750 25’ 08’’ E. It has a geographical area of
preparation and approval of mega-plans, management of 2, 23,200 hectares. It is surrounded by district Jalandhar
existing infrastructure and restructuring of facilities. 80 in the north, Ludhiana in east, Sangrur in south-east,
- 90% of government data is geographic in nature - Bathinda in south and Firozpur and Faridkot in the west
containing an address, service boundary, pin code, or (Fig. 1). It has 331 inhabited villages and four towns.
latitude and longitude co-ordinates. In local
government, city planners view maps for development METHODOLOGY
plan; engineers need information on utilities to forecast The Research work has been divided into three parts:
how serving a new colony will affect overall service; In the first part the Land Use (Built Up, Pond, River,
and the estate office updates data with measurements Wasteland, Plantation etc) information of the Moga
taken from a recent survey [10]. district was extracted from the Satellite imagery with
the help of a supervised classification technique.
OBJECTIVE Support vector machines classifier available in ENVI
The objective is to create a Village Information System Image processing & GIS software has been used to
which will provide detailed information pertaining to classify the subset of the IRS-P6 LISS-III data (spatial
natural resources, infrastructure and demography for resolution 23.5 m) acquired in January 2007. Kernal
every village in a district. Spatial data has been type for the SVM classifier used in the study is Radial
extracted from the satellite imagery and revenue basis function which is the default kernel and works
department maps and the non-spatial data has been well in most cases.
collected from various government departments like
Department of Computer Science, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi
Creation of a Village Information System for Moga district in Punjab using Geoinformatics

The Visually Interpreted Land Use information of 2002 1) Identification of Disaster prone areas and mapping of
has been used to generate the training sets for the infrastructure and amenities required for its
classifier. Polygon Identification of all the classes in the management. The decision support system can help at
2002 Land Use layer were selected and then with the all stages of disaster management such as preparedness,
help of the SPSS statistical package, fixed random warning, relief and mitigation. In case of flood
samples were selected from the list. The selected occurrence in the Satluj river, queries like which
samples from the list were identified in the 2002 layer villages in the Moga district will be flooded, which will
and 50% of the centroids of the selected polygons were be the nearest health facilities, in which administrative
used as the training set and remaining 50% were used block, tehsil/sub-tehsil, assembly/parliamentary
for testing the classified output [11]. Post-Classification constituencies, police control area the affected villages
operations like merging of classes, raster to vector are present, how much population, cattle and
conversion and smoothening of vectors was done to infrastructure will be affected, calculation of
finalize the vector layer. Linear features like the compensation according to the revenue divisions,
Transport Network, Canals and drainage have been locating areas where necessary bunds can be
visually interpreted based on the variation in color, tone, constructed to control future floods etc. can be answered
texture, shape, size, location, association etc. A field on the click of mouse.
survey was carried to verify land use categories and 2) Identification of areas with poor infrastructure
necessary corrections were incorporated after ground (transport, canal network, schools, health institutions,
verification to finalize the data. The extracted landuse electricity and telecom network), their planning,
information is shown in the Fig. 2. monitoring the development, maintenance and assets
In the second part the village boundaries of the Moga management can be done in a faster and cost effective
district were digitized from the Land record Department manner.
maps using the base information from the Survey of 3) If crime data is available then spatial analysis of the
India 1:50000 Toposheets. Village Directory from the data and emergency planning.
planning department was acquired which contains about 4) Periodically generation of Natural resource
two hundred and fifty attributes (socio-economic, inventory, comparing the temporal data and assessment
demography and infrastructure) about a village. This of the environmental impact. It is very difficult to
data was attached to the village layer using a unique collect such information through traditional surveys as it
code common in both the datasets. Basic Electoral and takes a lot of time and resources. In this situation, by
revenue information like the Parliamentary/Assembly using geoinformatics we can save a lot of time, money
constituencies and the Kanungo/Patwar circle were and labour.
added to the village boundary. Locations of the Health For example, Identification of a suitable waste disposal
institutions like Sub-centre, SHC, PHC, MPHC etc. data site in such a way that it has the least negative impact on
from the health department was appended to the village human as well as the environment, according to the
layer. Information from the Police department was population growth rate.
added to the village boundary layer to demarcate the 5) Supplementary information like Water table depth
police station control area. .Software used for the (Fig. 3) can be extracted for implementation of
Geographic Information system (GIS) work is ESRI development programs such as drought assessment,
ArcInfo Workstation Ver. 8.3. wasteland, wetlands, bet area, drinking water, flood
Finally a customized application is to be built using prone or degraded area etc in a faster and cost effective
open source tools to view the data. This application will manner.
have limited functionality like Pan, Zoom-In, Zoom-out,
Simple query etc. If the user needs to do complex FUTURE SCOPE
spatial analysis then a full fledged GIS software is If the soil physiography, ground water quality and soil
needed. nutrient status information is available, then the same
can be appended to the existing database for effective
CONCLUSION nutrient and water management for sustainable
This study amply demonstrates the advantages of agriculture [12].
geoinformatics as a decision support system for High resolution satellite data can be used for land record
Local/State administration. Administrators need to be management. Land parcel boundary along with the
made aware about the benefits of this technology as it ownership and mutation details can be stored together to
simplifies the decision making, planning and assessment create cadastral level maps.
process in a more scientific and logical manner. Few With the availability of higher resolution ( spatial,
examples of the applications derived through the village spectral and temporal) satellite data, improvements in
information system are as under: GIS, GPS, database and hardware technology, the

Department of Computer Science, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi

 Proceedings of NCRDCA’09

information content and the accuracy of the generated

data can be considerably enhanced for various purposes.

REFERENCES
[1] P.K Sharma, C.M. Bhatt, V.K. Verma, P.K. Litoria and Anil
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Fig. 3. Drinking Water Depth In Moga I Block

Department of Computer Science, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi

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